


Just the thought of you (makes me stop before I begin)

by bookishandbossy



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Banter, Bickering, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Humor, Slow Burn, Witness Protection AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-30
Updated: 2016-12-30
Packaged: 2018-09-13 11:44:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9122095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookishandbossy/pseuds/bookishandbossy
Summary: When Hugo-winning author Leo Fitz manages to get on the bad side of not one, not two, but three criminal organizations, Agent Jemma Simmons is given the unenviable task of keeping him safe.   The fact that they can't stand each other doesn't help matters.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SuburbanSun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuburbanSun/gifts).



> Written for SuburbanSun (aka unbreakablejemmasimmons) on Tumblr for the Fitzsimmons Network's Secret Santa. 
> 
> Title from I've Got You Under My Skin by Cole Porter.

In the past year, Jemma Simmons had painted her entire apartment, knitted a scarf, a hat, and three pairs of socks, taught herself Mandarin, finally read _Anna Karenina_ and taken down eight men with nefarious intentions using a well-developed set of martial arts skills, the occasional vial of poisonous gas, and a very good trigger finger. Said intentions had, of course, been the murder of the various former Russian spies, mob informants, and embittered wives of crime lords that was her job to protect. (She was proud to say that she had the best track record in the entire Witness Protection Program. She'd gotten a special certificate for it last year.)

“Jemma Simmons, U.S. Marshal's Service,” she said brightly and flashed her badge at the security guard, thermos of perfectly brewed Earl Grey clutched tight in one hand.

“Weapons, please?” 

“Full set or just the guns?” Full set would involve the knives, the particularly potent can of pepper spray she kept in her purse, and the miniature morning star Elena had given her as a joke that still happened to be incredibly sharp, as well as unearthing all the various dangerous things she carried around with her on a regular basis from the bottom of her purse. She really needed to stop keeping things at the bottom of her purse, didn't she? 

The guard just gave her a strange look in response. Jemma sighed and began shedding all her weapons. He must have been new. Vision, her favorite guard, never made her empty out her entire bag. But then Vision was an experimental prototype designed by Stark Industries so he was a special case. 

 

“May wants to see you,” Elena called from across the office, where she and Bobbi were studying a bulletin board covered with different disguise options for their latest case, a Brooklyn fireman who'd gotten on the wrong side of the mob when he started investigating some suspicious arson cases. “And I want your opinion. Do you think Barnes would look better with black, red, or bright pink hair?”

“Bright pink?” Jemma crossed to peer at the bulletin board, which was plastered with images of suited businessmen, Irish actors, and a band from the 70's dressed entirely in leather and safety pins. “Is punk-rock considered incognito now?”

“Well, the ballet dancer disguise was a complete failure,” Bobbi said dryly. “He wasn't particularly enthusiastic about learning how to pirouette and jete.”

“Try the Irish one. You could ship him off to Dublin and make him learn how to brew Guinness,” Jemma suggested and headed off to May's office. Elena looked like she was actually considering it.

Melinda May, head of the Witness Protection Program, recipient of various medals of honor, and the general object of both the hero worship and abject fear of all the new agents, was sipping her jasmine tea and eating a pistachio muffin. If a hostile force broke into the office right at that moment, she probably could have taken them all out with nothing more than said teacup and muffin. Bobbi swore that she'd once seen May incapacitate a man twice her size with a dish of bar peanuts. Jemma desperately wished that she'd been there.

“You asked to see me?” she peered around the edge of the doorway, resisting the urge to drum her fingers against the wood frame, and hoped that it wasn't about the bistro tables she'd had to expense to the office on her latest assignment. (Hitmen had attacked her assignment while they were out at a cafe—the tables had simply been a casualty of war.)

“Come in, Simmons. I have a new assignment for you. Leopold Fitz.” May slid a fat file across the table to her. “Author, spends half the year hibernating in a cabin up in Alaska and the other half irritating the hell out of people in New York, winner of both the Hugo and Nebula awards, and currently at the top of at least three different hit lists. Hydra, the Afterlife Initiative, and hitmen that we've linked back to Momentum Energy have all tried to kill him in the past week.”

“So how does an author manage to get on the bad side of a criminal syndicate, a radical terrorist group, and a multi-national corporation?”

“Have you read his most recent book?” At Jemma's shake of her head, May went on. “It contains...thinly disguised versions of all their leaders. Set in another galaxy four hundred years in the future with aliens who communicate telepathically and breathe ammonia. They form a sort of dictatorial triumvirate that his valiant heroes overthrow. It's an allegory for our current political situation, apparently.”

“So the head of HYDRA takes time out of his busy day torturing people and wreaking mayhem to pop into the sci-fi section and see if anyone's been writing ammonia-breathing versions of him?” Jemma quirked one eyebrow and took another sip of her tea.

“He told everyone about it. As an act of protest.” May's face was completely expressionless. Jemma couldn't tell if it was because the older woman was weighing the odds of Jemma being able to keep Leopold Fitz alive or because she was trying not to laugh.

“I suppose I'll have to read it then. How long is he expecting protection for?” Jemma asked.

“Until they stop trying to kill him. Go do some research, Simmons. I expect a protection plan on my desk before you leave today.”

Eight hours, one novel, half of another, five short stories, a pointed series of Twitter exchanges that culminated in a full-on blogging war, and an entire YouTube playlist of book signings and convention appearances compiled by someone who claims to be Leopold Fitz's #1Fan later, Jemma was convinced of one thing and one thing only: Leopold Fitz, Hugo-winning author, was a total bloody idiot.

 

The thing was, Fitz shouldn't have been their problem. He hadn't witnessed any mob members blowing another mob member's brains out or been involved in any elaborate drug trafficking rings, and the odds of them being able to extract any crucial testimony from his novel were embarrassingly low, despite the phone calls she'd already received from various law enforcement agencies who'd heard about her assignment. She'd try, of course, especially since one of the phone calls had been from Kara Palamas over at the CIA, sounding remarkably smug and offering to take Fitz somewhere international if Jemma wasn't quite up to the job. (Kara had never forgiven her for beating her by two and a half points on the languages exam during CIA training, before Jemma had transferred over to Witness Protection.) Someone must have decided that it wouldn't look good for the government to let a prominent author die on their watch and called in a favor. Which it wouldn't, of course but...authors who didn't have the good sense to abide by the standard “no resemblance to persons living or dead” disclaimer were most definitely not her job.

Especially when they refused to return her emails, phone calls, and ill conceived attempts at Morse code. Finally, she caved and went straight to the source: his literary agent, a slender redhead named Natasha Romanoff who was almost terrifyingly efficient and promised that Fitz would contact her before the week was out. 

“I have ways,” Natasha said sweetly. “He likes to go off the grid at that cabin of his when he doesn't feel like dealing with all the shit he has to do. No email, no phone, no Internet. But he always cracks eventually when he wants to watch Doctor Who.”

Two days later, she had a very apologetic email in her inbox from Leo Fitz (dictated down to the word by Natasha, she suspects), an offer to meet whenever she wants to discuss the program, and the assurance that yes, he did understand the concept of witness protection.

Jemma got there early, just in case there were any assassins lurking in the bushes or if any Momentum Energy officials decided to stop by for their morning coffee and spotted Fitz. Admittedly, the odds of that were incredibly low. The coffee at the tiny cafe she'd told him to meet her at was beyond terrible. And not even fair-trade. However, she waited until he'd arrived to go over. She needed to observe Leo Fitz in person first. A little bit of surreptitious snooping never hurt anyone.

He didn't look at all like his author photo. No curls, no atrociously patterned shirt and novelty tie, no model of a starship clutched tight in one hand. (Well, she supposed that he wouldn't carry the starship model around with him.) If you looked at him from the right angle, in the right light, with his shadow of stubble and vividly blue eyes, Leo Fitz could almost be...attractive. 

He promptly ruined it by taking a sip of his coffee and nearly spitting it out, eyes bugging out of his head and mouth twisted like he'd just tasted a lemon with hot sauce on it. The coffee must have gotten worse since the last time she'd been here. He poked tentatively at his scone—it would taste like cardboard, better to just eat the whole thing at once and get it over with—and Jemma pulled her shoulders back, tightened her grip on her tea (not from the cafe, of course), and marched over to meet him. She'd worn her most intimidating suit for the occasion. 

“Agent Jemma Simmons. I'm the marshal assigned to your case,”she said crisply as she slid into the chair across from his.

“I told Natasha that I didn't need witness protection,” Fitz grumbled into his coffee. “How long am I stuck with you anyway?”

“Mr. Fitz, I don't think you quite understand the gravity of the situation. You have multiple groups of people trying to kill you,” Jemma said, trying to keep her tone as professional as possible. Most people's reaction to her arrival was one of, if not unbridled joy, overwhelming relief.

“And I'm still alive.”

“Only out of sheer luck. And the fact that we've been going through your mail to check for anything suspicious,” she informed him. “The Afterlife Association's preferred weapon is poison in envelopes. The lab's still waiting for results on the most recent batch, but there was at least one suspicious credit card offer.”

“Did you confiscate all my proofs?” he demanded. “I've been looking for the latest N.K. Jemisin for the past week. You can't just--”

“And we may have saved your life. Mr. Fitz,” Jemma leaned forward across the table. “I sincerely wish that you weren't on the hit list of three different organizations. Sincerely, sincerely wish. But you're in real danger and as long as you are, you're stuck with me.” 

“You know, I told Natasha that this would all blow over in a few days but apparently I was wrong and she was right,” he said glumly and took another sip of his coffee. He managed to grimace less this time. That happens quite a lot.”

“I've found that international crime lords and CEOs don't tend to be the forgiving type,” Jemma pointed out. “Why you'd do it anyway? Did you wake up one day and decide that it had been too long since you'd annoyed someone evil and powerful?”

“They poisoned my coffee, didn't they?” He ignored her question and stared mournfully down into his cup. “That's why it tastes so awful.”

“I watched the barista make your coffee the entire time and I ran a background check on the whole staff here. No known connections to any of the organizations that are after you and your coffee came from the exact same machine as everyone else's. It's just the coffee here.” She took another sip from her thermos and tried to not be smug about the longing look he cast in its direction. There was a muffin tucked away in her bag too, along with a Ziploc bag full of tea bags, a bottle of aspirin, a miniature First-Aid kit, and a chemical agent she'd had to get special permission to carry. 

“So am I getting a fake name? A new wardrobe? Plastic surgery? Or am I going to have to move to someplace like Iowa?” His eyes went wide with horror and Jemma was sorely tempted to tell him about the five months she'd spent in Iowa protecting a key witness in a government corruption case. Nothing but corn as far as the eye could see. The most exciting part of the assignment had been when she'd watched the season finale of Downtown Abbey with said key witness. 

“Nothing that dramatic, I'm afraid. You're simply going to have to lay low for a while until they either forget about it or we get enough information on any of your—enemies to put them away. Sharon Carter's been working on a corruption case centered around Momentum at the FBI for forever so you'll have to talk to her if you remember anything relevant.” They had a cabin tucked away in a sleepy California coastal town, one they've used for previous witnesses who needed to fade into the background for a bit but not disappear entirely. “The Maximoffs from Interpol would like to talk to you about HYDRA's international side too, but they're lower priority for the moment.”

Fitz just blinked at her. Then he blinked again. 

“If you wrote them all into your novel, you have to know something about them,” Jemma explained slowly, relishing the look on his face. “We're not expecting addresses of safe houses or lists of known members. Just anything you might have picked up when you were doing research for your book.”

“My sources are confidential, you know. And it all got translated into the world of the novel. Ammonia and telepathy and whatnot.” He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. 

“So translate it back,” she said sharply. If Leo Fitz was going to be the bane of her existence for however many weeks they would be confined to the cabin for, she was going to get some proper information out of him. She'd always wanted to impress Sharon Carter and not just because the other woman was the niece of living legend and former top spy for MI5 Peggy Carter. The Carter connection was only about sixty percent of it. (The fact that Sharon had once told off Tony Stark himself, saved Steve Rogers' life, and dated Sam Wilson made up the other forty percent.)

“I can't just translate it,” he huffed. “Writing is a craft. An _art_. Not a convenient source of information for government agencies. Asking me to undo months worth of carefully constructed metaphors and character arcs and world-building to--”

“Well, you'll have plenty of time in the cabin. We leave Friday. Meet me at the courthouse at 10am sharp.” She pushed her chair back from the table and left with that, her heels clicking satisfyingly against the sidewalk. Behind her, Fitz made an indignant noise that sounded a bit like a seagull fighting other seagulls for a crust of bread. Or possibly like a decrepit wooden roller coaster. She'd have plenty of time to find an appropriately irritating metaphor.

 

“He's so annoying,” she told Elena and Bobbi. “It requires effort to be that annoying. He's probably studied it.”

“Do you think you could get him to autograph books for us? His second one, with all the space sex and people jumping through wormholes? It's a great love story,” Elena added when Jemma shot her a dubious look. “I cried at the end.”

“I liked the one about time travel,” Bobbi said from in front of the bulletin board. They'd added some new images of stone cottages and tweed jackets, as well as a new photo of Barnes looking extremely unhappy. (Apparently he hadn't reacted to the hair dye news well.)

“You could take some with you to read while you're stuck in the cabin. I'll lend you my copy,” Elena offered. 

“And have him see me reading them? That would just make him even more annoying,” Jemma scoffed.

“All right,” Bobbi turned and leaned against the wall, making herself comfortable. “I'm giving you exactly fifteen minutes to complain about Leo Fitz. Then we're all going out and getting sushi.”

She managed to get through the amount of sugar she'd seen him put in his coffee, his overuse of his favorite metaphors, his inability to comprehend that writing barely fictionalized versions of crime lords might get him in trouble, his hair, his stubble, his complete failure to respond to any form of communication, and his clothing choices before her fifteen minutes were up.

 

Apparently Leo Fitz did not believe in packing light. He arrived at the courthouse with two suitcases, a laptop bag, a milk crate filled with books, and one massive behemoth of a typewriter.

“You have a typewriter?” Jemma raised one eyebrow so high that it nearly arched right off her face. 

“I write all my first drafts on it. Don't make copies either until each draft is done. It keeps the work pure,” Fitz said smugly and clutched the typewriter to his chest like his first-born child. She barely resisted the urge to tell him that she certainly wouldn't expend any time trying to rescue any lost first drafts. Not if all his pages flew right off the side of a cliff and got swept away into the Pacific. Not if a seagull swooped down and carried them off. Not if they were lost in a vineyard—not that she had any idea how his novel might get lost in a vineyard, but she liked to cover all her bases. 

“Your agent must love that,” she said dryly and opened the trunk of the car to survey how much space they had. Quite a dismal amount, as it turned out.

“Oh, Natasha once threatened to sell it for spare parts if I didn't back everything up somehow. I suspect she's got a camera planted inside it somewhere taking pictures of every page but I prefer being in denial. Have you got anything to wrap the typewriter in?” he asked cheerfully. “It's quite fragile.”

“Just hold it on your lap.” Jemma said crisply as she picked up the first suitcase and heaved it into the trunk. “What do you have in here, anyway?”

“Books,” Fitz said, like he couldn't imagine having anything else. “What do you have in all your suitcases?”

“Clothes. Weapons. And books.” When she was younger, her suitcase for family vacations had always consisted entirely of books packed around a very small square of clothing. And some spare books in her carry-on, just in case she read all the other books. (It had nearly driven her mother insane.)

“Any sci-fi?” he asked, visibly brightening. “I've got the whole Foundation series with me.”

“I think Asimov is overrated, actually.”

Fitz made a noise similar to a cat trying to cough up a particularly large hairball. They argued about it for the entire trip up the coast, as well as her driving style (too slow), her taste in music (if he heard one more Spice Girls song, he would actually leap out of the moving car), his insistence on carrying his typewriter on his lap for the entire trip, and her refusal to stop for snacks (did he have any idea how impossible it was to secure an In-n-Out?). Jemma was beginning to understand exactly how he had managed to annoy people to the point of sending trained assassins. When they finally arrived at the cabin, they both practically leaped out of the car in relief. Luckily, his typewriter survived their escape. 

The cabin was lovely, really. Redwood and marble counters and one hard-to-defend but remarkably picturesque bay window. May had acquired it for a ridiculously low sum of money after it had become part of a particularly messy divorce and promptly set about securing it. State-of-the-art alarm system, steel shutters for the windows, direct secure line to headquarters, brand new kitchen...It was certainly a step above Iowa. Someone had even gone grocery shopping for them.

That someone, however, hadn't been told that Jemma couldn't cook. (Apart from liquid nitrogen ice cream, which she'd mastered the art of making at parties during college.) The refrigerator and cupboards were filled with kale and chicken and couscous and onions and tomatoes, with nary a frozen pizza or conveniently placed takeout menus in sight. Coulson must have been the one to do the shopping—he was always offering her samples of the rainbow chard or Brussels sprouts he'd picked up at the farmer's market and thinking he was being sneaky when he offered to go out on smoothie runs for the office. (The sriracha and beer in her fridge had been a one time occurrence. She'd just been stupid enough to mention it to Elena and Bobbi when Coulson was within earshot.)

“I've never seen this much quinoa in my life,” Fitz said, peering into one of the cupboards. They'd finally managed to haul all the luggage inside and he'd promptly started exploring, claimed the breakfast nook as his writing space, and had to be physically deterred from touching the alarm system. 

“You can't cook, can you?” she asked him glumly. There was a seafood place twenty miles up the coast, if she remembered correctly. And there had to be a juice bar somewhere. The laws of living in California decreed it

“I mean, I can. A bit. Nothing complicated but I cook for myself whenever I'm up in Alaska. Natasha told me that I would die if I kept on eating frozen meals so she and Clint sent me a box full of cookbooks and basic kitchen stuff. Clint's her husband and her partner at the literary agency,” Fitz explained. “He keeps on offering to teach me archery. He thinks I need to get a hobby.”

“Besides annoying people? I've heard that woodworking is quite nice. Quiet too.”

Fitz was too busy examining their cheese options to reply. 

Two hours later, she was forced to admit that, if nothing else, Fitz was a good cook. He'd made some kind of garlicky chicken on a bed of roast vegetables and couscous, with a kale salad and a peach crumble for dessert. 

“There really isn't very much to do in Alaska,” he said when her eyes went wide at the sight of the crumble. “It's what I do when I get writers' block, anyway. Throwing things up at the ceiling didn't work too well and I kept on having to pay to get the dents out.”

“So why did you pick Alaska?” Jemma asked and swallowed a forkful of the crumble. It was delicious, all brown sugar and butter and the sweetness of the summer's last peaches exploding across her tongue. The fact that he cooked would also significantly reduce the probability of someone trying to poison him with takeout. Always a bonus. (She still remembered the time she'd had to carefully test five boxes worth of Chinese food for all known toxins. The food had gone cold long before she was done and her witness, the former right-hand woman of a noted poisoner, hadn't exactly been pleased with her. Jemma had held back any remarks along the lines of cold food being better than a cold body.)

“I like quiet when I'm writing. No neighbors complaining that their mail got mixed up with yours, no one throwing parties on Saturday night, no editors casually dropping round to see how the latest draft is coming on. If my editor wants to talk to me in Alaska, he has to set up a prearranged time for the call and make sure I won't be asleep.” Fitz's grimace at the mention of his editor made her suspect that sometimes he slept through the calls anyway.

“So you decided to live without sun half the year just to evade your editor?”

“Loki is terrifying. I used to have his brother as my editor,” Fitz said mournfully. “And Thor was my favorite—he brought me donuts and read the parts he liked best out loud to the entire office. But Loki did the edits on City on the Edge of Time and after that won the Hugo...I got stuck with him for life. He never lets me put in talking monkeys anymore.”

Jemma, who had skimmed all the parts with the talking monkeys, wisely refrained from saying anything.

 

Leo Fitz, as it turned out four days later, was a loud typist. He'd immediately co-opted the breakfast nook as his writing corner, covering the table with sheets of notes and mugs of half-drunk tea, and hadn't moved from that spot for the past three hours. Judging from the peeks she'd sneaked over at his work, however, he had managed to write exactly four and a half pages. Four and a half dialogue-heavy pages. His writing process seemed to consist of staring accusingly at the typewriter, slowly tapping out a few words, frowning at them, occasionally x-ing them out, looking out the window at the ocean with an expression of utter despair, and then tapping out a few more words ten minutes later. 

“I can hear you breathing, you know,” he finally said.

“Well, I can't exactly stop,” Jemma pointed out and returned to her knitting. Her college roommate Jane was expecting her first baby and besides, knitting needles made a perfectly adequate weapon if someone burst in.

“Can't you go run an errand or something?” Fitz scowled down at his manuscript. “There has to be a farmer's market around here.”

“I'm not going to leave you by yourself. You'd probably find a whole new group of people to offend.” Not to mention the trouble that she'd get in with May for leaving him alone. 

“I would not!” Fitz said indignantly. “I just—I can't work with people around, all right? And right now I can't work at all. There's no tragic back story for my hero, no clever quips for the comic relief—I don't even have a blueprint for the spaceship. It's the sunshine and the good weather.”

“The sunshine?”

“Exactly. I do my best work in the dark and the dead of winter. Preferably with six feet of snow outside my window. A blizzard would be quite nice too.”

“Right,” Jemma announced, setting her knitting down with a decisive click and rising to her feet. “We're leaving this cabin before both of us go mad.”

“I thought I wasn't allowed to go outside.” Fitz blinked owlishly at her.

“Leopold Fitz, award-winning author and popular target for insane henchmen, can't go outside. But Paul Duncan, tourist on vacation with his girlfriend, certainly can. How's your American accent?” Jemma eyed him critically, already deciding on a disguise. It was a pity they couldn't do anything permanent to his hair, but perhaps with a hat? He'd definitely have to do glasses—big black hipster frames, she was thinking. Maybe a flannel and some skinny jeans, a big string bag to carry anything they got at the farmer's market in, a jean jacket that she could cover with pins. 

“Pretty good,” he said, accent pitch-perfect. “I watched a lot of American TV growing up.”

Twenty minutes, three protracted negotiations, and one promise of ice cream later, they were ready to venture out into the real world and hope that none of Fitz's enemies had henchmen lurking around small California beach towns. She couldn't really imagine any of Hydra's goons or Momentum's sharply suited hit men purchasing handmade goat cheese or going surfing. The Afterlife Initiative, which had started as a radical commune up in Oregon, was a more likely threat but they lacked the manpower to search the entire Pacific Coast and Bobbi was currently running a very convincing scheme to convince them that Fitz was hiding out in Humboldt County.

“Put your arm around me,” Jemma hissed when they pulled into town. “And maybe try smiling.”

“No one's going to believe that you're my girlfriend,” Fitz informed her. “Besides the fact that you're currently glaring at me, you're stratospherically out of my league.”

“It's part of the cover. You've never been seen with a girlfriend, according to the various Tumblrs that have devoted themselves to your life and writing, so—”

“I have fan sites? Real fan sites? Wait,” Fitz leaned across the car, looking delighted. “Do they write fic about my books? What pairings do people like? Are there coffee shop AU's?”

“Don't you ever Google yourself?”

“Natasha won't let me.”

They spent the next few hours wandering around the town. There was, in fact, a farmers' market that sold everything from local berries to hummus to dream catchers. Fitz insisted on buying as much corn as they could possibly carry, a massive bunch of arugula, two bunches of basil, and an entire watermelon. Luckily, she managed to talk him out of trying the sriracha hummus. They peered into the windows of the local surf shop and poked around the bookstore (Fitz was not allowed to go anywhere near the science fiction section) and ate truly massive amounts of ice cream. Fitz was quite pleasant when pretending to be someone else. In fact, to Jemma's surprise, he was quite charming, chatting with the vendors about their produce and making silly puns about the dutch chocolate ice cream. 

“You like people,” she said and tried not to sound surprised. They'd wandered down to the beach and after Jemma had identified a suitably secure spot with an unimpeded line of sight and several viable exits, sprawled out across the sand to soak up the sun.

“I like people when I'm not trying to write. And Paul Duncan likes people all the time. I came up with some backstory for him, actually—do you want to hear it?” Fitz flashed a grin at her. “It starts in Seattle, where our intrepid hero is born to Michael and Julie Duncan. Michael works at Microsoft, Julie is an architect. He has one older sister, who he happily torments throughout his childhood. Until, of course, she gets abducted by aliens.”

 

They reached a...detente, she supposed. Fitz still shot her glares if she was too loud around his writing nook and she still rolled her eyes whenever he made anything with kale or tried to get her to give Stranger in a Strange Land another chance. But he was making progress on his next novel, judging from the frantic typing sounds that came from the nook at all hours of the day and night, she'd read her way through most of Les Miserables, and the regular updates on Fitz's situation that came by way of secure phone calls with May suggested that the threat level was slowly and steadily being reduced. The FBI had run a bust on the Afterlife Initiative's compound and managed to arrest a number of their key players on charges of tax fraud, Hydra seemed to be in the midst of a power struggle, and Sharon Carter was making progress on her Momentum case. 

She still wanted to talk to Fitz, however. And Fitz still showed no sign of wanting to talk to her, much to Jemma's aggravation.

“Do you have a good reason for not wanting to talk to Sharon or are you just being contrary?” she demanded, moving a pile of pages off one of the chairs in the nook to seat herself across from him. Fitz yelped and dived for the pages, despite the fact that they appeared to be in no particular order.

“I don't have anything to tell the FBI. It's not like I went undercover in some kind of elaborate sting operation. Look, I didn't even get most of the information firsthand,” he admitted. “I—I had a source who told me what I needed to know and how to disguise it in the book. A friend.”

“Any reason why you haven't mentioned her before?”

“Look, she's a hacker. She hasn't broken any laws,” Fitz said quickly when Jemma frowned at him. “Maybe bent a few. But _technically_ she hasn't broken any laws. She just—she used to date the head of HYDRA. Before she knew that he was running a massive criminal organization. And her mom kind of started up the Afterlife Initiative.”

“Does she also have ties to the mafia?” Jemma asked dryly. “Brought up in an international art forgery ring? Former jewel thief?”

“She wanted to blow the whistle on what she knew. But she knew that they'd find her if she did. So I offered to do it for her. And to make fools of them all in the process.” He grinned a little, probably remembering the passage where part of the dictatorial triumvirate had been trapped by a Persian cat. (Jemma had read the book for research purposes after all. She'd just read it where he couldn't see her.) 

“Are you sure she's just a friend?” There was a hot knot of something drawing tight in her chest. It couldn't have been jealousy. That would have simply been an illogical reaction. 

“Definitely just friends. We've known each other since middle school,” Fitz said like that explained everything. He did have a point. “She was going through a goth phase and I was the president and only member of the rocket club. She—she's never had a lot of people in her life and she wasn't sure who she could trust.”

“So she's the one who really needs witness protection. If you just tell us where to find her, I'll tell May and she'll send someone who she knows we can trust. But why on earth didn't you tell us before that we had a perfectly--”

That was when something came smashing through the window.

Jemma didn't think. She dived for him, shielding him with her body despite Fitz's squeak of alarm and attempt to rescue his pages. It was glowing yellow, brighter and brighter, and slowly spreading across the floor. She'd never seen it in person before but she recognized it from photos of the Roxxon facility Peggy Carter had taken down in the 40's. Nitramene, an explosive substance developed by Howard Stark during World War II. A small amount had been enough to detonate an entire building. 

“Fitz,” she hissed. “In exactly five seconds, I am going to let you go. Then you are going to run as fast as you possibly can.”

“And then what—what happens to you?” Beneath her, Fitz sucked in a breath, his eyes huge with worry. 

“Then I hope that we have enough liquid nitrogen to defuse it. And you run.” No one had ever died on her watch and she refused to let him be the first, not when he had so many things left to do. “Now go!”

Fitz ran. Jemma sprinted for the vacuum flask of liquid nitrogen she'd stashed in the pantry and emptied it over the nitramene with steady hands. If it was enough, it'd be enough. Doing the calculations in her head over and over again would do nothing. But if she hadn't brought enough of the liquid nitrogen or if there was more of the nitramene than she had originally thought or-- 

The nitramene hissed, the color slowly seeping out of it, and shriveled back on itself. She remembered how to breathe again. 

“Jemma?” Fitz asked slowly. “Are you all right?”

“Perfectly fine. But we're moving to Oregon.”

 

Their second car ride together was significantly more peaceful. Fitz only tried to change her music twice and questioned her choice of snack food once. He also spent the entirety of the six-hour drive frantically typing away on his novel, typewriter jammed between his knees and the glove compartment and seat reclined back as far as possible to make room for it. Every so often he'd mutter lines of dialogue under his breath or pull a page out of his typewriter to stuff it into the glove compartment.

“Are you going to tell me what it's about yet?” She was only a little bit curious. The tiniest, most miniscule bit curious.

“No.” He slanted a hand protectively over his typewriter, like she might abandon all principles of safe driving to snatch it out of his hands. “Not till it's done.”

When they finally arrived at the even tinier Oregon coastal town, he grabbed the sheaf of pages from the glove compartment and the typewriter and sprinted inside to stash them in a safe place. “I'm not carrying your bags inside!” she shouted after him. “And I can and will leave Asimov to the mercy of the elements.”

Fitz sprinted back out at the speed of light. 

“That was a brave thing you did,” she told him that night over dinner. “Writing the book 

“Not really,” Fitz shrugged, staring intently at his plate. “Writing's what I do. What you did with the nitramene, that was the really brave thing.”

“It's what I do.” They didn't talk much for the rest for dinner but she could feel Fitz looking at her whenever she looked away.

 

“What's your favorite kind of jam?” Fitz asked, peering up from his typewriter at her. 

“Strawberry,” Jemma said absently over the top of her book. (A memoir she'd picked up on a whim, about a mother and daughter pair in a tiny town in Connecticut.) “Why do you ask?”

“Background information.” There was the sound of more typing. “It's inspiration.”

“What book would you take with you to a desert island?”

“A manual on boat building, of course. Maybe a guide to poisonous plants of the South Pacific.” Attached as she might have been to her complete Jane Austen collection, it wouldn't be much use if she were stranded in the middle of the Pacific. 

“Who's your favorite person that you've ever protected?” Fitz said

“I got to protect the president once. Before she was the president, of course. It was early on in the Knope campaign and no one thought she had a chance of winning the nomination, let alone the election, but she qualified for Secret Service protection so May loaned me out. She was amazing,” Jemma said and sighed happily. “We organized her campaign office together and she even requested me as her protection for her transition meeting with President Bartlet.”

“Right.” There was the sound of more typing.

“I don't see how this counts as inspiration.” Jemma eyed him suspiciously as she turned another page. 

“My characters are currently eating scones with strawberry jam in space. Besides, I, er, I write more when you're around. Inexplicable, really,” he mumbled and resumed typing.

“I thought that I breathed too loudly. And that you couldn't write with people around. Or with sunshine or sound or spinach or--”

“I said that it was inexplicable.”

Strangely enough, she had the feeling that she was going to miss him once her assignment ended. 

 

The next three weeks, before she got the message from May informing her that Fitz's friend had made contact with Sharon Carter and given them enough information to take all three organizations out simultaneously, were...peaceful. Almost idyllic, apart from their spirited arguments about whether there was anything redeemable about the Star Wars prequels, the relative merits of all twelve Doctors, and Jemma's latest choice of reading material. They went walking along the beach, where she dared him to run into the freezing-cold Pacific and he found bits of sea glass washed up on the sand. They haunted the local bakery until the owner reserved a table in the back corner for them and watched every season of Mad Men and went on one very secure hike through the woods. (“Typing doesn't count as exercise, Fitz.”) They had endless conversations bracketed by comfortable silences and it was all very...easy. Comfortable, like curling up on her favorite spot on the couch with a mug of tea and basking in the warmth of a lazy Sunday afternoon. Simpler than she had ever expected it to be. 

He wasn't bad company, when they weren't arguing. Sometimes even when they were. And when the end of her assignment finally came, she couldn't help feeling a slight twinge of disappointment. If only at the fact that they hadn't quite gotten to the end of Mad Men. 

She saw him off at the airport in Portland, shamelessly deploying her badge to get him to his gate. Professional standards to maintain, of course. “I still want to know what your book's about,” she blurted out, shifting from foot to foot as they stood at the gate. There shouldn't have been anything awkward about this moment. It wasn't as if they'd—anyway, he'd been another of the people she'd protected. A particularly interesting one, perhaps, and sometimes, when he'd glanced over at her, she'd wondered if—Anyway. 

“I'll send you an early copy. Promise. And, er, thank you.” Fitz turned a faint shade of pink. Apparently, he was also determined to make this moment as awkward as possible. Good to know that they were in accord about that. 

“I—thank you. Too.” 

President Knope would always be her favorite person that she had ever protected. But somehow Leo Fitz might have become a close second. 

 

Six months later, a bound proof of Leo Fitz's latest novel appeared in her mailbox. It was about a ragtag group of space pirates, trying to defend the galaxy from a mysterious dark force. A quick-witted young engineer, a former mercenary, a translator fleeing her aristocratic upbringing, a young couple wanted for inter-planetary heists...and their captain. A woman named Emma Starborn who put strawberry jam on her scones, organized her star maps by region and size, carried eight different deadly poisons on her person, and once dueled the CEO of a galactic corporation and won. A woman who might, in another universe altogether, be her. 

Six days later, Leo Fitz himself appeared in her office. 

“I thought that maybe I could take you out to dinner. As a thank you for keeping me alive and everything. I mean, not just as a thank you. Because I also just want to take you out to dinner. Someplace nice. I—please tell me that you read the book,” he said urgently. 

“I thought that you were in Alaska.” She'd worried about him, occasionally, wondered if he ever got lonely out there in the middle of nowhere. 

“I was. I just wanted to make sure that you read the book. Because you're unlike anyone else I've ever met and I wanted to tell you that. I mean, I'm not quite sure if it came across,” he said and took a step closer to her. “So I thought I'd better check and come in person.”

“Fitz, I loved the book. And yes. I'll go to dinner with you,” she added. “Somewhere nice. And I'm picking the place.”

“Last time, you chose a cafe with terrible coffee,” he pointed out.

“Last time, I didn't like you yet.”

Jemma Simmons had always prided herself on her high professional standards. But she thought that she could make an exception, just once, for kissing Leo Fitz in her office. It was really quite an exceptional kiss.


End file.
